For many in Batu Sapi, a blind love for BN
By Clara Chooi, The Malaysian Insider
Shirley Fitri knows she lives in squalor but does not believe it is the Barisan Nasional (BN) government’s duty to help her improve her livelihood.
Her modest wooden home in Kampung Istimewa along Jalan Batu Sapi here is old and decrepit, its floors aged and full of cracks.
Every day, she opens her windows to a view of a makeshift dumpsite in her backyard and the stench of rotting rubbish.
The 30-year-old housewife may have been living in dire conditions all her life but she does not blame BN for it.
Like most others in the village, she has been taught for years to be “grateful” to the ruling coalition.
When asked what she is grateful for, however, the mother of three has no answer.
“BN has brought a lot of development to us. They are the government and we must be grateful for what they have given us,” she told The Malaysian Insider when met during the campaign for the November 4 by-election. This is why, said Shirley, her vote would always go to the ruling coalition.
She agreed that the village was messy and in urgent need of attention, but she does not believe that any opposition party could help to make a change.
“You look for yourself and you can see how bad it is here,” she said, gesturing to the dumping ground just outside her home and the other dilapidated houses on stilts.
“But we must vote for BN. It is our responsibility to vote for BN. They are the government,” she insisted. Like Shirley, the other villagers of Kampung Istimewa, a small, messy settlement in the coastal township of Batu Sapi, are of the same opinion.
Here, just south of Sandakan city, over 200 families and comprising some 700 voters live in tattered conditions with many youths jobless and the others, working in low-wage jobs as factory workers or fishermen.
But to them, the word “opposition” is taboo and those who oppose the BN are considered as traitors to the government.
At the entrance to the settlement, villagers have hung a massive banner containing a warning, printed in bold, that no opposition party was allowed to campaign for votes inside.
“We, the villagers of Kampung Istimewa, forbid any opposition party from campaigning to beg for votes here”, the sign read. Last night, PKR’s de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was forced to skip the village due to their dislike for anyone remotely against BN.
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